Unusual religions in the 1911 census

Percy Oswald Reeves (40), a “Follower of the Buddha”, a single lodger from England living at 25.2 Kenilworth Square, Dublin 6. Reeves worked as a “Artist Craftsman and Teacher, Enamelling and Metal Work”.

Charles Peterson (60), a pipe maker from Riga, Lativa, living at 114 Leinster Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6. He listed his religion as “Free Thinker” as did brother and fellow pipe maker John (45) and another relation and scholar Conrad (21). Petersons, who sell pipes, tobacco and cigars, are still in business to this day.

Coonoor Kinshnaswamy (22), a married “Hindu” from India working as a “Nurse to Small Boy” for the Watson family at 16.2 Sandycove Avenue, County Dublin.

Julius Shillman (53) a “Traveler” from Russia, his “Mid-Wife” wife and six children living at 33 Victoria Street, Portobelllo, Dublin 8. All listed their religion as “Israelite”.

Olive Fox (27) from England and her visitor friend Ella Toring (43) (a.k.a. Ella Young) from Antrim at 14, Dundrum, County Dublin. Both did not list their occupation but put down “Pagan” as their religion.

Olive Fox (27) and friend in Dundrum

Eileen Hawkes (36), a Civil Servant, and her sister Louisa (24), a Musician, living at 35 Chelmsford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. From Limerick, both listed their religion as “Suffragette”.

Robert Foran (50) from Cork, a 2nd Class Assistant Accountant in the Army Account Department, and his wife Kathleen (46) from Armagh who both listed their religion as “None, a Pantheist“. They were living at 1 Brooklyn Terrace, Dublin 8.

Robert Thomas Hamilton (61), who lived with his wife, daughter, sister in law and servant, at 52 Pembroke Road, Dublin 8. Hamilton put down himself and the household, bar the Catholic servant, as “Simple Believes in the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God Who Came in to the World to Save Sinners – Not Attached to any Denomination Meet for Worship with other Christians at Massion Hall, Dublin”. Hamilton was formerly “Head of Teaching (at the) Irish Railway Clearing House”.

Robert Thomas Hamilton (61) and family in Dublin 8

John McDonagh Grant (28), a single boarder from Scotland living at 55 Sydney Parade Avenue, Dublin 4. A “private secretary, manager and journalist”, Grant listed his religion as “Christian certainly but non churchman”. [Note: Transcription is wrong. See original transcript]

David Houston (57), a college lecturer from Antrim, down as a “Rationalist” living with his son, two servants and a visitor. Living at 13 Haroldsgrange, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.

Ralph Jack Richard Mecredy (22) (More info on him, see here), a medical student from Down, and four other “Buddhists” living at 9 Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4. Fellow 22 year old and medical student Francis Clements Crosslee from Down. Elizabeth May Warrington (38) and her daughter Isobel Warrington (17) both born in India. Finally Arthur William Garbutt (22), a journalist from England.

Ralph Jack Richard Mecredy (22) and friends in Sandymount

Four “Samuelite” boarders living at 103 Phibsborough Road, Dublin 7. Alexander Leitch (21), a Second Division Clerk in the General Register Office from Scotland; Charles S Lafferty (23), a dentistry student and his brother Henry A (20), a agricultural student from Tyrone and Daniell A McLoughlin (19), a student of medicine from Derry. Anyone know what a Samuelite was/is?

Maria J O’ Connor (50), a widow living off “Private Income” who listed her religion as “Ceased to belong to any”, living at 40 Killiney, County Dublin.

I’m pretty sure the Hamilton entry reads “Simple Believes in the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God Who Came in to the World to Save Sinners”, which sounds slightly less mental.

Another fascinating bit of research. I’m interested in some of the fundamentalist sects that sprang up in Ireland in the nineteenth century, like the Plymouth Brethren and the Cooneyites, remnants of which were still around where I grew up in the midlands. Does anyone have any reading suggestions?

Julius Shillman’s son, Bernard, an eighteen year old in the 1911 census, later qualified as a barrister and was author of A short history of the Jews in Ireland, published in Dublin by Cahill & Co. in 1945.

In 1911, David Houston, “Rationalist” with Padraic Colum and his later wife, Mary Gunning Maguire and Thomas MacDonagh, founded the important if short-lived literary journal The Irish Review, which published work by Yeats, George Moore, Oliver St John Gogarty, and many other leading Revival figures. MacDonagh lived at 12 Haroldsgrange. St. Enda’s was at 20.1 and 20.2 Haroldsgrange and the 1911 census records teachers and pupils.

Konrad Peterson, who was involved both in the Latvian Revolution and in 1916, was a friend of the Gifford sisters. Thomas MacDonagh obviously refused any information on his religion, as it’s indicated only by a dash, with the enumerator drawing a line up to it leading to “RC?” http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000133834/

[…] post was interesting. The Come Here to Me! blog is from Dublin Ireland. They had a posted called “Unusual Religions in the 1911 census.” The variety of different beliefs is wonderful. Who knew there were so many different beliefs in […]

Great post. I spent a good while poring over the census when it went online three years ago and discovered a Russian itinerant salesman who was staying as a boarder in my great-grandmother’s house the night of the census. He put ‘Hebrew’ as his religion. His daughter, I also learned, grew up to a prominent South African communist and an anti-apartheid dissident.

@Geraldine Clarke – by any chance was your great-uncle William Arthur Dwyer related to Seamus Dwyer, TD in the 2nd. Dail, who was shot in his ‘Sprit Grocers’ shop in Rathmines on 20/12/1922?

Seamus Dwyer was a close friend of Michael Collins, a District Court Judge in Rathmines (with Erskine Childers and Countess Markiewicz), drafted the Collins-de Valera Pact (a vain attempt to avert the Civil War) and was head of the Citizens Defence Force (a shadowy organisation that operated out of Oriel House in 1922/23). Seamus Dwyer was survived by his wife (no children), mother and three brothers, Dr. W Dwyer (possibly your great-uncle?), Luke Dwyer, 3 Vernon Avenue, Booterstown and Eddie Dwyer and two sisters, Mrs. Byrne of Limerick and Miss May Dwyer.

If you are related please email me at mckennam [at] gmaildotcom as I have interesting information relating to the death of Seamus Dwyer.

[…] Today, the blog has received over 5,000 comments from readers, and published in excess of 1,720 articles, on everything from the back lanes of Dublin to the history of football in the capital. We’ve continued some long running series’ such as the pub crawls of Dublin (albeit with less regularity!) and had new series’ on subjects like the 1911 census returns. […]

[…] We’re delighted to post a few pictures from inside no.14, giving you a taste of what to expect. We’ll be running an article or two on Henrietta Street historically during the months of July and August. With the 1911 Census so central to our understanding of this house and those who lived in it, readers might be interested in three CHTM! articles exploring that census. Firstly, we have looked at Atheists and Agnostics in that census, while we’ve also looked at foreign nationals and unusual religions. […]

[…] It’s likely many of you have lost hours of your lives to the 1901 and 1911 census returns. Both digitised and freely available online, they are a great insight into life in Dublin over a century ago. we’ve looked at them in some detail on the site, for example exploring foreign nationals in the 1911 census, and unusual religions.. […]

I covered Reeves and the Mecredy household in my “Buddhism and Ireland”. Chez Mecredy, Mrs Warrington was probably the wife of Albert who was head of the American Theosophists; in 1932 she hosted the international Theosophical convention in Adyar (India). Isobel was presumably her daughter. The Mecredy family were very lively – Ralph’s father developed bicycle polo and won races to prove the superiority of pneumatic tyres while his mother was the first Irishwoman to take part in a car race. I don’t know what the connection was between the 3 students (Mecredy, Crosslee and Garbutt) but probably it was religious.

Reeves was a council member of the London-based Buddhist Society for Great Britain and Ireland between 1910 and 1917. In the 1920s Maynooth library acquired copies of two of the Society’s texts, suggesting a certain attention to Buddhism and Theosophy in Ireland. As well as the BSGBI there were also Irish-based representatives of the Indian-based Maha Bodhi Society as well as readers of the San Francisco-based “Light of Dharma” magazine, published by a Japanese Buddhist mission there.

Interesting that the Peterson pipe makers should describe themselves as ‘free thinkers’. Wasn’t their slogan “the thinking man smokes a Peterson pipe”? So their message was more subtle and subversive than it seeme to me, as I smoked a peterson for many years..
Re the Hamiltons, “Massion Hall’ should probably be “Merrion Hall”, for many years the centre of non-aligned evangelical protestantism in Dublin. It is still there, but now part of the Davenport Hotel on Merrion St Lr.